I am posting this again in order to
emphasise just how serious this admission is.

Bank contagion
is elementary economics, not something mysterious and
unknowable. Any economist
with basic knowledge knows this problem.

It has long been obvious that Gordon
Brown the Clown is a dull, economic illiterate. He
is so incompetent he does not even recognise how revealing
is this admission.

He probably believes that by ‘owning
up’ to something he believes an understandable error
will gain him political advantage for ‘being frank’.
This is a typical politician’s trick but, in this
case, the ‘admission’ which he believes to
be harmless is far worse than other inanity he could have
chosen.

Brown’s irresponsibility, Enronisms
and incompetence cannot even have been mere politician’s
dishonesty. He must really believe his own tripe.

“French and UN helicopters have fired on military
camps operated by Ivory Coast incumbent leader Laurent
Gbagbo, in a bid to halt attacks on civilians.”

“The drones also are more than a surveillance
tool, having been used as an offensive weapon in recent
conflicts, where they are used to track, target —and
sometimes attack—insurgent groups and terrorist
cells. In Pakistan, the U.S. has waged a campaign of
air strikes against al Qaeda using an armed version
of the Predator, a drone made by General Atomics Aeronautical
Systems, Inc.”
—
“ Both the humanitarian emergency in Japan and
the air campaign over Libya underscore the increasing
reliance of the Air Force—which has long prided
itself on glamorous fighter jets—on aircraft piloted
from offices thousands of miles from danger. The high-altitude
Global Hawk, for instance, can stay aloft for as long
as 32 hours. And because they carry no pilot, such aircraft
can fly without fear of exposing crews to radiation
or other hazards.

“Master Sgt. Victoria Meyer, a spokeswoman for
the Air Force in the Pacific, said the Global Hawks
were routinely swept for radiation after flights over
Japan but added that no traces had been detected.

“In conflict zones such as Libya, remotely piloted
aircraft provide an exceptionally finely grained picture
of the battlefield. Peter Singer, the author of 'Wired
for War,' a book about military robotics, said that
unmanned aircraft "give you some amazing capabilities
that targeting folks wouldn't have even dreamed of a
few years or wars back, especially in accuracy and greater
fidelity." ” [Quoted from online.wsj.com]

“Ten years on from 9/11, al-Qaeda appears to
be on the back foot. One of the main reasons is that
its leadership no longer enjoys untouchable sanctuary
in the tribal areas of Pakistan where for many years
it has been able to plot and train its recruits.

The reason? Pilotless American drone aircraft with
a payload of deadly Hellfire missiles, guided to their
targets by remote control from thousands of miles away
in the American desert.” [Quoted from bbc.co.uk]

Most people I’ve met from Islam
roots think Westerners are naive and stupid because/when
they tell the truth, or even behave in an open manner.
“You’re so naive, Ican read your face”
is the type of comment I’ve received!

They actually think lying and deceiving
is ‘clever’.

Now our ‘reporters’, who
mostly have not much more regard for facts, are expressing
surprise that the Arabs who wanted the attack on Gaddafti
are now hanging back,and even pretending it wasn’t
what they really wanted/meant.

The Arab League now have exactly what
they wanted - the West takes responsibility, while they
can continue to whine and play the victim.

The reality is not well understood
in the West.

Just because the Arab League are dishonest
and unreliable, does not mean the advanced nations do
not have to control the backward dictatorships.

The West must try to realise that these
dictators are very conflicted. They are worried that they
wi'll be next.

It is also false to believe that
these dictatorships are all in this together on the same
side. Quite widely, they actually hate each other and
are rivals for power and status.

“The first impression of Mr. Wilson at
close quarters was to impair some but not all of these
illusions. His head and features were finely cut and exactly
like his photographs, and the muscles of his neck and
the carriage of his head were distinguished. But, like
Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated;
and his hands, though capable and fairly strong, were
wanting in sensitiveness and finesse. The first glance
at the President suggested not only that, whatever else
he might be, his temperament was not primarily that of
the student or the scholar, but that he had not much even
of that culture of the world which marks M. Clemenceau
and Mr. Balfour as exquisitely cultivated gentlemen of
their class and generation. But more serious than this,
he was not only insensitive to his surroundings in the
external sense, he was not sensitive to his environment
at all. What chance could such a man have against Mr.
Lloyd George's unerring, almost medium-like, sensibility
to every one immediately round him? To see the British
Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven
senses not available to ordinary men, judging character,
motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each
was thinking and even what each was going to say next,
and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument
or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest
of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor
President would be playing blind man's buff in that party.
Never could a man have stepped into the parlor a more
perfect and predestined victim to the finished accomplishments
of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in wickedness
anyhow; the Old World's heart of stone might blunt the
sharpest blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this
blind and deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where
the swift and glittering blade was in the hands of the
adversary.

“But if the President was not the philosopher-king,
what was he? After all he was a man who had spent much
of his life at a University. He was by no means a business
man or an ordinary party politician, but a man of force,
personality, and importance. What, then, was his temperament?

“The clue once found was illuminating. The President
was like a Nonconformist minister, perhaps a Presbyterian.
His thought and his temperament wore essentially theological
not intellectual, with all the strength and the weakness
of that manner of thought, feeling, and expression.
It is a type of which there are not now in England and
Scotland such magnificent specimens as formerly; but
this description, nevertheless, will give the ordinary
Englishman the distinctest impression of the President.

“With this picture of him in mind, we can return
to the actual course of events. The President's program
for the World, as set forth in his speeches and his
Notes, had displayed a spirit and a purpose so admirable
that the last desire of his sympathizers was to criticize
details,—the details, they felt, were quite rightly
not filled in at present, but would be in due course.
It was commonly believed at the commencement of the
Paris Conference that the President had thought out,
with the aid of a large body of advisers, a comprehensive
scheme not only for the League of Nations, but for the
embodiment of the Fourteen Points in an actual Treaty
of Peace. But in fact the President had thought out
nothing; when it came to practice his ideas were nebulous
and incomplete. He had no plan, no scheme, no constructive
ideas whatever for clothing with the flesh of life the
commandments which he had thundered from the White House.
He could have preached a sermon on any of them or have
addressed a stately prayer to the Almighty for their
fulfilment; but he could not frame their concrete application
to the actual state of Europe.

“He not only had no proposals in detail, but
he was in many respects, perhaps inevitably, ill-informed
as to European conditions. And not only was he ill-informed—that
was true of Mr. Lloyd George also—but his mind
was slow and unadaptable. The President's slowness amongst
the Europeans was noteworthy. He could not, all in a
minute, take in what the rest were saying, size up the
situation with a glance, frame a reply, and meet the
case by a slight change of ground; and he was liable,
therefore, to defeat by the mere swiftness, apprehension,
and agility of a Lloyd George. There can seldom have
been a statesman of the first rank more incompetent
than the President in the agilities of the council chamber...”
[From chapter 3, The economic
consequences of the peace, by John Maynard
Keynes]